TRANSCRIPT - ABC NEWS BREAKFAST - TUESDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2025

EE&OE TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW

ABC NEWS BREAKFAST, SYDNEY

TUESDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: Bondi attack, Gun Law reform, Safety of Jewish community

JAMES GLENDAY: And Tony joins us now from Sydney, his home city. Tony, welcome to News Breakfast.

MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS, TONY BURKE: Good morning.

GLENDAY: Can I just get your reaction first of all to that reception? Obviously, some people here in Bondi are very, very upset and pretty angry at the moment as well.

BURKE: It’s very raw, and that makes complete sense. Last night the Federal Police Commissioner, Krissy Barrett, and I turned up late last night with a wreath. It was the right thing to do. We spent a bit of time just very quietly talking to some of the people who were there. As I left, as your video showed, there were a couple of people who followed me out with the comments that you’ve heard there. But people are grieving. This is a horrifically difficult time. And, understandably, let’s think about what’s just happened. It’s raw, emotions are high, and people are angry. And I understand that completely.

GLENDAY: Tony, can I just take you to the investigation? Obviously, you’re in charge of ASIO. What more do we know about these shooters? Is there anything you can tell us at all about them? And do you know what the condition is of the surviving shooter, who is still in hospital?

BURKE: The surviving shooter at the last I was told was still in a coma. We’re in an active investigation, so effectively what is already been put out there is the limit of what I can provide you. But we have a father and a son here, who the son is an Australian citizen born here. The father came here in 1998 on a student visa, married and then has been on what we call a resident return visa for a number of years. One of them had been on the periphery of some ASIO inquiries more than half a decade ago. But certainly, there was never a moment where any of the intelligence gave people a reason to believe that we were going to see anything like what happened on Sunday.

EMMA REBELLATO: Minister, should more have been done, though, at the time?

BURKE: Our intelligence agencies can only work with what they have and work with what they know. They will never be all-seeing and all-knowing. And I see examples from information that’s given to me every day – every single day – of how they keep Australians safe. In hindsight people look back, and obviously ASIO always reviews – always reviews – its processes and always looks back to make sure that things are getting stronger and stronger. But some of the criticism of our security intelligence and law enforcement agencies that I’ve seen isn’t right. The work that they do is extraordinary. And to take a situation half a decade ago, where one of these two people was not themselves a person of interest; they were someone who had associated with someone who was and, therefore, they ran a check on them. And in doing so there was none of the evidence more than half a decade ago that this person was going to turn out the way that they did.

REBELLATO: One of the questions that’s being raised here in particular is how the father, this man’s father, could have had six licensed guns. We know the National Cabinet is now looking at changing these laws. Can you take us through some of the key priorities that will be looked at here?

BURKE: Not all of your viewers will be familiar with the suburb of Bonnyrigg, but anyone from Sydney, the concept that someone in Bonnyrigg could have any valid reason to have that number of firearms just beggars belief – completely beggars belief. So, there’s a series of issues that the states and territories have agreed with the Australian Government to work up now. Obviously there’ll always be some people who need firearms for managing their properties and things like that. That’s understood. But it should not simply be that you go through checks when you first get a firearms licence, and that’s not constantly updated as new information comes in. That needs to happen. The other thing that we’re looking at is being able to connect our intelligence information – so that’s where people haven’t committed offences but where our intelligence agencies have reason for concern – connect that to whether or not people can have gun licences. It also goes to issues of where guns can be modified to actually make them into something more dangerous – even more dangerous than the initial firearms themselves. When John Howard did what Australians have forever been proud of in terms of the response to Port Arthur, we’ve looked to the rest of the world, and I think we as a nation probably felt a bit invincible because those firearms laws worked and have had an extraordinary impact. But now it is clearly – clearly – beyond time for them to be updated and for the next range of upgrades to our firearms laws to happen. And I’ve got to say the goodwill from the states and territories that was showed at National Cabinet yesterday is something where I’ve got a lot of confidence that that will now happen. Of course, in hindsight, everyone will always wish this had happened earlier.

GLENDAY: Yeah, I don’t want to prejudge where you end up with this, Tony; it does feel like a pretty pivotal moment, a tragic moment, in Australian history. Are you expecting that the utility of some of these weapons will be restricted? For example, you know, having a weapon that can fire quite as many bullets without needing to be reloaded, is that the sort of thing that’s going to be a real focus?

BURKE: All of those issues and more. All of those issues and more. As I say, linking our intelligence capacity to gun licensing is a very big step which we haven’t taken before. But this is where different layers of information, if we’ve got it and it can be used potentially to protect people, then let’s find a way to use it. And all of that is now on the table.

GLENDAY: Tony, before we let you go, a big concern here among the Jewish community in Bondi is the issue of antisemitism. Around this suburb, there are private security guards at places of worship, at places of prominent Jewish residents. A number of people here have essentially questioned whether or not they are safe in their own community. What are you planning to do, and what is the Government planning to do to try to tackle this issue?

BURKE: As Jillian Segal’s report makes clear, you need to deal with this at every single level. When I visited after there’d been some horrific graffiti attacks in Woollahra, and I was visiting with a local rabbi the day that that had happened, I was referring to the need for more security measures, and he said, “Yes, you need to do that. But we don’t want to have to live behind a cage.” And many of us have seen places of worship, Jewish schools, with levels of security out the front that simply shouldn’t be required in Australia. And so while the Government is doing what’s been asked of us in terms of extending the support for that sort of security, which the Prime Minister announced yesterday, there’s also a whole lot at the actual sources of antisemitism, actions that are being called for by Jillian Segal, but also a whole lot of those actions which we’ve already moved on. So we now have the toughest hate crimes laws that we’ve ever had in Australia, making doxxing a criminal offence, introducing the ombudsman role that’s now there for our universities to try to make sure that students can always feel safe simply by going to a place of learning. And obviously as well, the decisions that we’ve made on hate symbols, whether they be symbols of terrorist organisations or Nazi symbols. Prior to the last couple of years, you did not find visas being cancelled the way I’ve been cancelling them. And there were a lot of objections, a couple of weeks ago, from some corners of Australia, where someone had attended a protest and I cancelled his visa. But he was a neo-Nazi. And if you’re in this country on a visa, you’re here as a guest, and if your time in Australia is going to be spent telling Australians and Jewish Australians that they’re not welcome, we’ve got the right to cancel that visa. You can go. And that individual is no longer in Australia. And while it might be historically controversial to make a decision like that, I don’t resile from it for one minute.

REBELLATO: Minister, we know many families are in deep grief today, and they will be for quite some time. You said yesterday that the government would expedite visas for family members overseas who want to come to Australia. Has that been happening?

BURKE: There’s about 16 that have been processed to date. But there’s more coming in. And effectively the processing time to get those family members across we’ve been reducing to a few hours and just putting everything at it. I had a request for a further visa as a result of my visit last night to Bondi. So, we’re dealing with that in good faith. Not everyone will know, but in the Jewish tradition funerals happen as soon as they possibly can, which is not the case for every tradition in Australia. And so, we’re wanting to make sure that there’s no administrative or processing delay that stops families from being together at the most horrific moment they will have faced.

GLENDAY: Tony Burke, it is a really, really hard time for the people of Bondi and the people of Sydney, and we do appreciate you making time to speak with us this morning.

BURKE: Thanks. And thanks for physically being there today.

GLENDAY: No, it is a pleasure to actually be down here, isn’t it, at Bondi Beach. I mean, it is quite an incredible scene. Amidst all the discussion of the tragedy – and it is tragedy – it is nice to see so many people – so many people – coming together to support one another.

ENDS